Falkland & St Andrews Tour

Undiscovered Scotland: The Ultimate Online Guide

Distances: The main circular route shown in dark blue
covers 76 miles. It can be reached from Edinburgh by the addition of 33 miles
each way and from Dundee by the addition of 2 miles each way. The excursion to
the Tentsmuir Forest adds 4 miles each way.Fuel: Readily available at many places on the tour.

Left Index (Feature Level)

Clickable Map of the
Falkland & St Andrews Tour

This tour includes much of the coast of
Fife, including the fascinating and
extremely attractive villages of the East Neuk of
Fife. But it also includes
St Andrews and what was for
a time the effective capital of Scotland,
Falkland.

Areas Passed Through:

The main circular route shown on the map in dark blue is 76 miles
long, mostly on good quality roads with some (avoidable)
single track roads along
the north coast of Fife. The route
assumes a starting point of Glenrothes but it can be
tackled from Edinburgh
at the cost of an additional 33 miles each way (mostly dual carriageway) from
Edinburgh to
Glenrothes. It can also be
tackled from Dundee by the
addition of 2 miles each way, just nipping across the Tay Bridge and taking
Newport-on-Tay as your
starting point.

Lower Largo

Pittenweem Harbour

Crail Harbour

Leuchars Church

St Andrews

Falkland

The description assumes that the route is tackled anti-clockwise.
There's no strong reason for this and it could equally be tackled clockwise:
but doing it our way means that if you found you were getting short of time
having reached St Andrews,
you would already have seen the best parts of the route, and you would have an
easy option to return directly to the start point.

Glenrothes is
Fife's administrative heart, a new town
developed after the Second World War. From it you should follow the A911
towards Leven, then the A915 along the coast to the twin villages of
Lower Largo on the coast and
Upper Largo a little inland.
Then you follow the A917 south west to Elie. Here you find the first of a string
of beautiful villages that lie along this south coast of what is known as the
East Neuk of Fife.Elie and Earlsferry are actually twin
villages and between them they occupy the inland side of a broad south facing
bay.

The A917 along the coast bypasses the next of these villages,
St Monans, but you should take
the time to explore what some describe as the most attractive of
Fife's coastal villages. There are a
number of attractions on the shore either side of
St Monans that can be
explored. West of the village are the ruins of
Ardross Castle and
Newark Castle, while
St Monans Parish Church
occupies the shoreline on at the west end of the village itself and the
St Monans Windmill stands
above the remains of its salt pans a little to the east.

The next of the East Neuk villages you encounter is
Pittenweem, which retains
the most active fishing harbour. A little inland is
Kellie Castle &
Gardens. A couple of miles east again, and you come to the twin villages of
Anstruther Wester and Anstruther Easter, usually simply known together as
Anstruther. This is the
largest and busiest of the East Neuk settlements: and is home to the
Scottish Fisheries
Museum. Don't leave Anstruther without exploring
the narrow shoreside streets immediately to the east of its harbour. These lead
to the hidden gem of Cellardyke, complete with its
own beautiful harbour. Cellardyke is perhaps the
least commercialised of the East Neuk villages. It is now effectively part of
Anstruther. A little
inland, again, is Scotland's
Secret Bunker.

Kilrenny stands
just to the north east of Anstruther. A few miles
further east you come to the most remote, and perhaps most photographed, of the
villages in the East Neuk of Fife,Crail. The harbour here has featured
on postcards for as long as there have been postcards, and the whole village is
a fascinating place to explore.

In Crail the A917 takes
a sharp left turn and heads north a little inland from the east coast of
Fife. At
Kingsbarns you come close
to the sea again, and a on the south side of the village a road leads you
through what is now a famous championship golf course to a parking area from
which you can enjoy Cambo Sands and the surrounding rocks. North west of
Kingsbarns the road passes
Boarhills, a tiny
residential village, en route into
St Andrews.

St Andrews is
known world wide as the home of golf. It is also home to one of Scotland's
oldest universities, to a castle standing on a
rocky outcrop, and to the partial remains of a
once great cathedral. It
also offers, to the south of the town, a harbour and beach, while to the north
are more beaches fringing the golf links. St Andrews is a fascinating place on
many different levels, and whatever else you do on this trip, ensure you spend
a little time here to make the most of it.
St Andrews is also home to
the British Golf
Museum and to St Andrews
Aquarium.

From St Andrews
the A91 heads north east, and you follow it as far as a roundabout in the
village of Guardbridge. Here you turn right, travelling past the end of the
runway of RAF Leuchars, home each September to a major
air show, to the
village of Leuchars. Here you
find St Athernase
Church, whose choir and apse have been described as "the second finest piece of Norman work in the whole of Great
Britain".

Your route from Leuchars depends on whether you
are taking the optional excursion to Tentsmuir Forest and Tentsmuir Sands. If
so you will follow minor roads north from the village that lead via an
out-and-back to the parking area behind the dunes at Tentsmuir to the B945 en
route to Tayport. If not, you
will follow the A919 then the A945 to
Tayport.

While the East Neuk villages revolve around their harbours, the
north Fife villages of
Tayport and
Newport-on-Tay tend to be a
little overshadowed by Dundee,
just across the water (and across the Tay Road Bridge). West of
Newport-on-Tay you should
follow very minor roads as closely as possible to the coast. A slight detour
from one takes you to the fragmentary ruin of
Balmerino Abbey.

Eventually these minor country roads bring you out in
Newburgh, and from here
you should head across country via the A913 and the B936 to
Auchtermuchty.
Following the B936 south from
Auchtermuchty brings
you to Falkland, a village
that, with good reason, was made Scotland's first conservation area in 1970.
Falkland Palace, whose
remains still dominate the village, was built from an existing castle for
James V in 1539 and became
his preferred residence. It includes the the world's oldest Royal Tennis Court
still in use. From Falkland it
is only a few miles along the A912 and A92 back to
Glenrothes.